


Matthew

by Baylor



Series: Birthright [28]
Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe, Conspiracy, Gen, Really You
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan's younger brother tries to make sense of what happened and how it's affected their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matthew

He’d always been a little in love with Stokely. She was tough and wry and cool and for some reason still took time to hang out with a little kid. Right from the start, Stokely always talked and listened to Matthew like he was important, like he was a grown-up, and he adored her for it.

It was right though, that she was with Stan, and when they moved from being careful and fragile around each other to being buddies to stealing kisses in the laundry room, Matthew was happy for them, and teased them mercilessly. Stan was everything Matthew wanted to become, so it seemed right that Stan would fulfill Matthew’s boyish crush-yearning for Stokely. 

The blush of that crush faded over the years, as Matthew grew and discovered girls his own age, but it still tinged his relationship with his sister-in-law, who grew more beautiful and confident with every passing year until Matthew had to tell himself to stop comparing the teenaged girls of Herrington High to the self-possessed young woman married to his brother, because it wasn’t fair to the girls, really. 

It didn’t seem possible that Stokely had been one of those girls, ever, that she had been awkward and silly and uncertain, though Matthew knew this must have been, back in the beginning, when she first came into their lives. It wasn’t how he remembered it, though. He just remembered her sad, and scared.

It also didn’t seem possible that she had ever been involved in the things they said she had been, back in the days of the Herrington High “incident,” when those teachers had gone missing. Matthew could never make the accounts of what had happened (which escalated wildly over the years) match up with the girl who had come to live in Stan’s room. 

It was legendary in school now, the events of September 1998. Speculation about drugs and psychos had given way to fantasies about cults and Men in Black and Satanists. Enough years had passed that no one was really shy talking to Matthew about it anymore. It didn’t even seem like anything that could have happened to actual people.

“I heard the teachers were the ones in the cult, and they tried to kill your brother and his friends,” one girl said to him.

“Those teachers who went missing -- CIA agents, man,” one of his soccer teammates said. “There was like this big experiment with drugs and mind control going on.”

But the one he liked best was the story that seemed to be taking hold the strongest, the one he thought would last over the years.

“Aliens, dude,” the stoner in his trig class said. “Those teachers got taken over by aliens, man, and your brother and those other kids stopped them. We’d all be fucking pod people by now if it weren’t for them.”

“Yeah, but what happened later?” Matthew fired back. “What was all that with Zeke Tyler taking off with Casey Connor?”

“Don’t you know?” the stoner scoffed, looking at him over the tops of his sunglasses. “The Man was after them. That was no kidnapping. That was a rescue.”

 _But if the Man was after them, why aren’t they after my brother?_ Matthew wanted to ask. _If Casey Connor needed rescuing, why didn’t Stan do it?_

But those were questions he never could bring himself to ask.

_____

The first Thanksgiving without Stokely, Stan was quiet. He mentioned that he was thinking about moving back to Herrington, or at least back to Ohio. Their parents were painfully anxious and uncertain with him, their own hurt and confusion making everything just that much more difficult.

Stokely’s short and sudden explanations to the family had done very little to explain anything, and then there’d been nothing. Stan did not seem inclined to elaborate on the abrupt end to his marriage, and their parents seemed afraid to push him. The atmosphere in the Rosado house resonated with pain that year. Even Cathy seemed hurt by Stokely’s abandonment.

Matthew just missed her. And he thought about her. He thought about 1998. He thought about his brother. Matthew thought about everything after Stokely left, harder than ever.

_____

Stan was alone in the kitchen, the rest of the house dark, when Matthew came in late Saturday. He had just put his fork into a slice of pumpkin pie. The pie tin was still on the counter, one more piece remaining.

“Hey,” Stan said, and Matthew responded with his own, “Hey,” before grabbing the pie tin and a fork and sitting down across the table. They ate their pie in silence and then pushed their plates away. Matthew stood and got them both a glass of milk, then sat back down while they both downed their drinks.

Matthew set his glass down on the table and looked over at his brother. Stan looked old, he realized, in a way he never had before. His shoulders slumped forward, as though under great weight.

“It’s all true, isn’t it?” Matthew asked.

“What?” Stan said.

“What happened when we were kids,” Matthew answered. “What you first said about aliens taking over the school. What the kids at school say about Zeke Tyler rescuing Casey Connor. It’s all true, isn’t it?”

Stan looked steadily at him but didn’t answer.

“Where’d she really go, Stan?” Matthew asked. “What’s she really doing?” 

“I don’t know,” Stan said simply.

“Is it the right thing? Is she doing the right thing?” Matthew persisted, and Stan looked down at the table.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think so.”

Matthew stood up, and looked down at his brother. He’d always felt smaller than Stan, always had to look up at him. It was strange to look down at his lowered head.

“Then why aren’t you with her?” he asked, and walked away.


End file.
